Biofuels and Rural Poverty
In a recent speech on the Obama Administration’s approach to rural poverty, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack focused on the use of biofuels in manufacturing as a way to address persistent high unemployment in rural communities. Secretary Vilsack said that such communities — defined as areas where 20 percent of the population has been poor for three decades or more — might rebuild their local economies by producing renewable fuels. According to the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, an estimated 353 counties are in this category. In 2010, the Agriculture Department created five Regional Biomass Research Centers to help establish…
